


Important

by finx



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-08 22:17:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8865490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finx/pseuds/finx
Summary: The tale of Howard Stark and Maria Carbonell, and the child they left behind.





	

Howard Stark met Maria Carbonell in a house by the sea, and they fled the party to walk on the beach. Howard was not expecting a particularly long walk – wink wink, nudge nudge – but he got derailed by the conversation. He’d never met a girl who talked about the war-torn world like Maria – frankly, but without bitterness. With kindness instead. She had a heart big enough for all the suffering in the world. Howard fell in love.

Her parents did not approve. They were old money; Howard was a low-class Jewish-born working man with treason only just wiped off his name. It added a thrill to their courtship, filled their lingering glances with sparks. Howard thought: _She is the kindest woman I know._ Maria thought: _He is the most brilliant man I’ve ever met._ Both of them thought: _This is the one._

Maria would not quite consent to elope, but the engagement was quick and dazzling. The wedding made all the papers.

It lasted longer than any relationship Howard had ever had. But that was a low bar, and within the year he was already wondering why monogamy was so popular. Maria, for her part, had a heart big enough for the whole world – but not, it turned out, warm enough for everyday use. It was far easier for her to love strangers at a distance than to forgive the mundane trespasses of married life. 

Still they tried, the both of them. They were still in love. They traveled. They threw parties.

They had a child.

It was a last-ditch attempt to save the sparks in their eyes. It didn’t work. 

These days they call it post-partum depression; back then, people called it a failed marriage and pretended not to see. He drowned his sorrow in alcohol, and in his work. His work was very important. She drowned hers in parties, and in charity. She managed several charities, and eventually opened her own. It was also very important. The child was left to nannies and tutors and his own devices. The child was not important. 

The child didn’t know sorrows could be drowned, so he lived with them layered on his skin until he couldn’t remember what sunlight felt like.

They still traveled, but not together. They arrived at parties in a glitter of diamonds and laughter, and left separately – wink wink, nudge nudge. Maria managed her charities and changed the world, one picturesque tragedy at a time. Peggy Carter founded SHIELD and came to Howard for money, and he gave her all she asked for and stuck around to build her shiny new weapons. He nearly destroyed the planet a few times, but he helped save it a few times, too. He got to call himself a hero, and so long as he didn’t come home he could almost believe it.

The child grew up loved, but not by the right people. When Howard Stark and Maria Carbonell died, together in death as they never quite were in life, their child tried to remember them as more than faces turned away. He enshrined their names, protected their works, and spoke of them often as people who changed the world, but the words were ash on his tongue.

Their child grew to be both brilliant and kind, until his name had eclipsed his heritage. He saved the world, one tragedy at a time, and did not turn away from the blood on his hands. He got to call himself a hero, but it was a long, long time before he could almost believe it.

**Author's Note:**

> pls note I made this up whole cloth based on the MCU; none of this is remotely related to comics canon. I just wanted to find a way to reconcile Howard as he is in Agent Carter with the childhood we know Tony had.


End file.
